innashtakser's review against another edition
4.0
Very nice biography of a Tsar who started wishing to drastically cut expenses for the army and invest the money in reforming the state and ended up defeating Napoleon. According to Rey his wish to liberalize Russia was real, but he had no way dealing with the lack of support from among the elites and thus in the end did very little and largely not in Russia itself, but in the Baltic area, in Poland and in Finland. Point of interest - the propaganda point that Napoleon was an Antichrist and will be coming to Russia in order to conquer it on behalf of the Jews was made before Austerlitz and it was the first time the Jewish threat issue was raised in Russia in this way. Well, I suppose it was not easy to find ways to convince the serfs to fight. Amazing that it worked though. Because it definitely did.
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